May 5, 2013
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On Monday, US Army Private Kimberly Rivera, a pregnant mother of four,
was sentenced by court martial to 10 months in prison and given a
bad-conduct discharge for crossing into Canada in 2007 to avoid
redeployment to Iraq.
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Rivera, now 30-years-old, was deployed to Iraq in 2006 with the Fort
Carson, Colorado. 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team. Stationed in
Baghdad, she was assigned to guard the gates at Forward Operating Base
Loyalty, where she was constantly approached by civilians. The soldiers
were under orders to treat every civilian, including small children, as a
potential threat warranting a lethal-force response.
Home on leave in December of that year, Rivera made the decision to go to Canada with her family and seek out refugee status.
In an April 23 interview with the anti-war organization Courage to
Resist, Rivera explained that she encountered a 2-year-old girl at the
gate who was crying and shaking violently from trauma. The child had
come to the base with her family, who was demanding compensation after a
bombing by US forces. “When I saw the little girl shaking in fear, in
fear of me, because of my uniform, I couldn’t fathom what she had been
through,” she said. “And all I saw was my little girl and I just wanted
to hold her and comfort her. But I knew I couldn’t.”
Rivera said in a 2007 interview, “I had a huge awakening seeing the
war as it truly is: people losing their lives for greed of a nation and
the effects on the soldiers who come back with new problems such as
nightmares, anxieties, depression, anger, alcohol abuse, missing limbs
and scars from burns. Some don’t come back at all.”
The family settled in Toronto and applied for legal immigration
status. In January 2009, Canadian immigration minister Jason Kenney
dismissed Rivera and other US war resisters living in Canada as “bogus
claimants…people who volunteer to serve in the armed forces of a
democratic country and simply change their mind to desert.” Rivera
appealed the decision.
In August of last year, the Canadian government ordered Rivera to be
deported into the hands of US authorities. She turned herself in at the
border.
On April 29, the Army sentenced her to 14 months for desertion; under
a pre-trial agreement, Rivera will serve 10 months in a military
prison. She will give birth behind bars in December.
Rivera was charged on two specifications of desertion: “intent to
stay away,” and “shirking hazardous duty.” While stationed in Iraq,
Rivera consulted a chaplain about feeling that she would be unable to
fire upon Iraqi civilians, including children she encountered during
assignments.
Rivera’s attorney, James Branum, told Democracy Now on
Tuesday, “The chaplain largely pushed her aside, did not give her the
counsel that she really needed…it’s unfortunate that she did not get the
legal advice and information she needed to seek status as a
conscientious objector.” Instead, Barnum said, “this chaplain told her
basically, ‘Suck it up. Continue on.’ ”
“If you are morally against what you are doing and don’t believe in
what you are doing, if you can’t in your heart be able to harm another
person but yourself…there should be a way out for people,” Rivera told
Courage to Resist. “Even though I did not fill out the official
application to obtain conscientious objector status, I consider myself a
conscientious objector to all war.”
She explained that she has suffered from post-traumatic stress
disorder since her deployment. Since being handed over to the Army, she
had been put to work at Fort Carson. “To this day, I can’t handle or
hold a weapon without breaking into severe anxiety and nervousness,”
Rivera said. “Since being back in the army, I just go to work every day.
Just playing soldier has been bringing up my anxiety. It has gotten
worse as my trial gets closer. For a while, they had me clearing
weapons…. They were having us clear them and test them for maintenance
and malfunctions. One day, I almost passed out, clearing weapons.”
On hearing the news of the ruling Monday, Rivera’s husband Mario said
that the children “broke down in tears. Just the thought of being away
from their mother for 10 more months—they’ve already been gone for eight
months out of her life, so it’s difficult.” He explained, “I personally
feel that the judge already made up his mind before the trial had even
started. It’s just too much. The kids need her.”
Their children, Kimberly Rivera explained, were suffering from depression and eating disorders as a result of her persecution.
The family’s plight typifies in many respects the situation
confronting the millions of working poor in the US. Kimberly and Mario
Rivera, natives of Mesquite, Texas, met at the local Walmart where they
both worked. They had their first child when Kimberly was only 19, and
had a second baby three years later. By 2005, the family was facing a
dire financial situation. Kimberly and Mario decided that one of them
should enlist in the military to acquire family health insurance and an
$8,000 signing bonus.
Such enlistment perks were heavily promoted by the Army, which was
facing a recruitment crisis in the face of popular opposition to the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Marketed to the most oppressed sections of
the working class and poor as a way up the economic ladder, a means to
serve one’s country, and a foot in the door to higher education,
thousands of men and women took the offer and were sent to the Middle
East.
Once in the theater of war, however, the illegality and brutality of
the occupations became clear to thousands of soldiers like Rivera.
The deep unpopularity of the wars, within both the US and Canadian
population, finds expression in the support Rivera’s case has elicited.
In the 10 days before she was deported from Canada last fall, 20,000
people signed a petition supporting the family’s right to remain in
Toronto. Polls have shown that two thirds or more of the Canadian
population want US war resisters to be able to stay in Canada as
permanent residents.
James Branum, Rivera’s lawyer, stated during the court martial
proceedings that she was being singled out to be made an example for
other would-be conscientious objectors. “Kim is being punished for her
beliefs and for her comments to the press while she was in Canada.
Because she spoke out against the Iraq War, Kim’s sentence is harsher
than the punishment given to 94 percent of deserters who are not
punished but administratively discharged. In the closing arguments, the
prosecutor argued that the judge needed to give PFC Rivera a harsh
sentence to send a message to the other war resisters in Canada and
their supporters.”
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